DC Comics - The Legendary DC Heralds Upgrade

[Vasco]

As for scaling from Superboy Prime, he was all over the place power-wise, and at his temporarily powered-up peak (as seen by his adult form at the time) he also managed to beat Monarch, who an assembly of alternate versions of Superman, including Ultraman, could do nothing against, if I remember correctly. It is far too inconsistent with the previously portrayed massive power gap between him and post-Crisis Superman to be reliable.

Countdown, Infinite crisis and Legion of 3 worlds...all the heroes who ganged up on him got bullied by him no to low diff, to the extent he was joking around with them he only got serious against Clark who was still holding back against him since he sees him as a kid, and he fought Superboy which lead to his death in Infinite crisis and fought him again in Legion of 3 worlds 1 vs 1 and at one pount was getting outclassed by him (this isn't your ordinary Superboy, this is an angry Superboy facing someone who killed him), SBP lost to Superman when they fell from a red sun.

There's a difference when he faces Superman and Superboy than how he faces other heroes, there's a clear showing on anger and fear.

 

[Antvasima]

If the statement is "Consistently these characters aren't that strong", that's a fair assessment. No comic character is anywhere close to where we rate them consistently and everyone has low showings. But to dismiss it because everyone would scale to Tier 3/2 doesn't work imo. Like with Marvel we wouldn't scale every third villain to Superman or Wonder Woman's full strength, for the same reason why we don't scale everyone to Thor's full strength.

Well, the issue as I see it is that if characters are almost completely consistently displayed at tier 5 at best, and only extremely rarely at the lower parts tier 4, then I think that the way that we currently rate them is extremely generous as it is, and an upgrade by a literal infinity is not remotely warranted.

Ehhh, the Supermen that Monarch fought were all demonstrably much weaker than Post-Crisis Superman. Red Son Superman has nothing close to what Post-Crisis Superman and Millerverse Superman's best showings match what Post-Crisis Superman can accidentally do when hitting someone else.

Weren't Ultraman (who has matched post-Crisis Superman, and an even more powerful Buddhist Superman included among the characters who attacked Monarch?

The thread itself is "These characters have Tier 3 and 2 feats, so should be Tier 3 and 2". Bringing up counter points to that idea is fine, but pushing that their current calcs or flawed are invalid doesn't fit the point of the thread.

Well, we have to talk about the larger context here. Meaning, does tier Low 2-C remotely make any logical sense whatsoever for the vast majority of these characters?

 

[Firestorm808]

Currently sifting through the stuff here since my last vote update. Will reply in depth when available.

 

[Antvasima]

Countdown, Infinite crisis and Legion of 3 worlds...all the heroes who ganged up on him got bullied by him no to low diff, to the extent he was joking around with them he only got serious against Clark who was still holding back against him since he sees him as a kid, and he fought Superboy which lead to his death in Infinite crisis and fought him again in Legion of 3 worlds 1 vs 1 and at one pount was getting outclassed by him (this isn't your ordinary Superboy, this is an angry Superboy facing someone who killed him), SBP lost to Superman when they fell from a red sun.

There's a difference when he faces Superman and Superboy than how he faces other heroes, there's a clear showing on anger and fear.

Well, the problem is that post-Crisis Superman has consistently been portrayed at enormously lower power levels than Superboy Prime in terms of their peak feats, and that Superboy Prime also only reached tier Low 2-C after a massive temporary power-up that he didn't keep during Legions of Three Worlds, so he is likely tiered considerably too high in the first place, and the fundamental everybody can fight everybody premise still applies.

 

[Antvasima]

Currently sifting through the stuff here since the last vote update. Will reply in depth when available.

Thank you for helping out.

 

[KLOL506]

Well, the problem is that post-Crisis Superman has consistently been portrayed at enormously lower power levels than Superboy Prime in terms of their peak feats, and that Superboy Prime also only reached tier Low 2-C after a massive temporary power-up that he didn't keep during Legions of Three Worlds, so he is likely tiered considerably too high in the first place, and the fundamental everybody can fight everybody premise still applies.

Again, can we not? This is missing the point of this thread. This thread's job is to determine which feat is a legit Tier 3/2 feat. We can worry about scaling shenanigans later, that's for its own thread.

 

[Qawsedf234]

Weren't Ultraman

Ultraman wasn't in Arena. Buddhist Superman was the only one that did anything to Monarch but he was also amped and we don't know if he scales to normal PC Superman in the first place.

Meaning, does tier Low 2-C remotely make any logical sense whatsoever for the vast majority of these characters?

No, but we use the same criteria for DC's near equalivent Marvel. We don't scale everyone to Thor's true strength because it wouldn't make sense.

Well, the issue as I see it is that if characters are almost completely consistently displayed at tier 5 at best,

While I get what you mean here, that's not a valid argument per our own historical standards. People are far more consistently Tier 8 or 7 but we don't limit them to those tiers despite them being infinitely more consistent. If you want to dismiss Tier 2 that's fine, but it would be due to them being outliers. Not because people would scale to Tier 2 or because their max is Tier 5.

 

[Deagonx]

If you want to dismiss Tier 2 that's fine, but it would be due to them being outliers. Not because people would scale to Tier 2 or because their max is Tier 5.

How do we determine if they are outliers, if not by demonstrating that they are consistently far below Tier 2? Not just in the sense that they don't usually go all out, but that the limitations of their power are a crucial plot point.

 

[Antvasima]

Ultraman wasn't in Arena. Buddhist Superman was the only one that did anything to Monarch but he was also amped and we don't know if he scales to normal PC Superman in the first place.

Okay. It seems like I misremember then.

No, but we use the same criteria for DC's near equalivent Marvel. We don't scale everyone to Thor's true strength because it wouldn't make sense.

We do in fact scale a massive number of characters that have never remotely displayed such enormous feats to 3-C and/or 2-C, which I in retrospect think was an enormous mistake, even though, unlike for DC Comics, there have been a very small number of feats of that scale for an even smaller number of characters.

While I get what you mean here, that's not a valid argument per our own historical standards. People are far more consistently Tier 8 or 7 but we don't limit them to those tiers despite them being infinitely more consistent. If you want to dismiss Tier 2 that's fine, but it would be due to them being outliers. Not because people would scale to Tier 2 or because their max is Tier 5.

As I have said previously, we cannot use historical standards regarding how we treat characters written by a single author that pays enormously higher attention to consistency in settings that are usually only a few hundred chapters long at best, with ones that are mostly completely incoherent due to being written by many hundreds of different people over a period of over 80 years across nearly 100,000 chapters in the case of Marvel Comics, or even across 28 years (if I remember correctly) and a few tens of thousands of chapters for the post-Crisis continuity alone. We really do need to pay much greater attention to consistency for the sake of reliability. I think that we even defined our fundamental rules for these settings in this manner.

 

[Antvasima]

Again, can we not? This is missing the point of this thread. This thread's job is to determine which feat is a legit Tier 3/2 feat. We can worry about scaling shenanigans later, that's for its own thread.

But if we just give a blanket okay for the Orion and Superman shaking the Phantom Zone feats, which seem to be the only somewhat reliable examples, without mentioning that these are absolutely enormous outliers/do not fit with other portrayals at all, and that Superboy Prime's regular state is currently scaled from his massively powered-up state, and that he was all over the place in terms of power-level (for example, he did beat The Batman Who Laughs' most powerful form once, but was also damaged by tier 5 or at most 4 characters at times, such as right before he was imprisoned in The Source Wall), we set an unstoppable avalanche of completely unreliable revisions rolling. That is how these issues tend to work around here.

 

[KLOL506]

But if we just give a blanket okay for the Orion and Superman shaking the Phantom Zone feats, which seem to be the only somewhat reliable examples, without mentioning that these are absolutely enormous outliers/do not fit with other portrayals at all, and that Superboy Prime's regular state is currently scaled from his massively powered-up state, and that he was all over the place in terms of power-level (for example, he did beat The Batman Who Laughs' most powerful form once, but was also damaged by tier 5 or at most 4 characters at times, such as right before he was imprisoned in The Source Wall), we set an unstoppable avalanche of completely unreliable revisions rolling. That is how these issues tend to work around here.

Once again, you are missing the point.

We can worry about all that later when the scaling bullshit comes in. Right now, we just need to sift through which one is a legitimate Tier 3/2 feat and which one isn't.

 

[Antvasima]

Okay. Post-Crisis continuity Orion stopping a universal threat and Post-Rebirth continuity Superman shaking the Phantom Zone seem somewhat reliable, but I would greatly prefer much more well-defined and explicit feats. Also, is the Phantom Zone truly literally infinitely large, or "just" of a finite universal size?

The other feats that I saw seemed almost completely unreliable, except for the one in which the Green Lantern Corps together managed to barely contain a galaxy-destroying explosion. That is the absolute peak explicit raw power display ever displayed for herald-level characters in the post-Crisis continuity that I can think of at the moment.

 

[KLOL506]

Okay. Post-Crisis continuity Orion stopping a universal threat and Post-Rebirth continuity Superman shaking the Phantom Zone seem somewhat reliable, but I would greatly prefer much more well-defined and explicit feats. Also, is the Phantom Zone truly literally infinitely large, or "just" of a finite universal size?

The other feats that I saw seemed almost completely unreliable, except for the one in which the Green Lantern Corps together managed to barely contain a galaxy-destroying explosion. That is the absolute peak explicit raw power display ever displayed for herald-level characters in the post-Crisis continuity that I can think of at the moment.

Isn't the latter response already handled by some other external factors like other stronger foes amplifying the explosion and Green Lanterns growing massively more powerful when in unison? I'm sure @Emirp sumitpo and @LordTracer already addressed this argument prior.

 

[Antvasima]

As far as I recall the explosion in question was explicitly stated to be of a galactic scale, with any other interpretation being subjective and speculative, but if we disregard that as Green Lanterns massively amplifying each other within a group, then we only have a handful of High 4-C feats for the individual herald-level DC Comics characters to somewhat reliably fall back on.

 

[Emirp sumitpo]

As far as I recall the explosion in question was explicitly stated to be of a galactic scale, with any other interpretation being subjective and speculative, but if we disregard that as Green Lanterns massively amplifying each other within a group, then we only have a handful of High 4-C feats for the individual herald-level DC Comics characters to somewhat reliably fall back on.

I think it's important to mention the GLC were likely weakened and low on power when they were containing the explosion, after they all have just fought a literal war against the Sinestro corp. And a ring users stats will vary depending on either their emotional level or their ring charge.

Not only that, but most of the lanterns who participated don't really have reason to scale to the Tier 3/2 characters.

 

[Antvasima]

There are no reliably tier 3 or 2 post-Crisis DC Comics herald-level characters based on their own peak feats, and the Green Lantern Corps were not displayed as exhausted in any way at the time they contained the explosion as far as I recall. Not to mention, also as far as I recall, they can recharge their rings by reciting their oaths.

 

[Antvasima]

And as for scaling to Superboy Prime, does that mean that we should scale him to The Batman Who Laughs, who defeated Perpetua, who created the entire DC Comics multiverse, and the post-Crisis incarnation of Wonder Girl (Cassie Sandsmark) to that in turn, and all of the low-tier villains that she had trouble with to her, or do you only want Superman upgraded for some selective reason, despite that he was outclassed by Prime during Infinite Crisis without severely weakening him first? Prime was always just intended as a "take that" smear-attack against the longtime fans of DC Comics that was supposed to be demonised, attacked, and ridiculed at every opportunity, not as a remotely consistent character even by DC Comics standards.

 

[Spinoirr]

I say have their powers varies as the heroes always hold back to avoid killing unless they are anti heroes

 

[Emirp sumitpo]

Not to mention, also as far as I recall, they can recharge their rings by reciting their oaths.

They require the lanterns in order to even charge it.

the Green Lantern Corps were not displayed as exhausted in any way at the time they contained the explosion as far as I recall.

As I've stated, there's no reason for any of these other GLs to even scale to the characters who would scale to Tier 3/2. The only characters who would do so are guys like Hal, Kyle and debatably John and that's it. Most lanterns in general are like, tier 5.

And as for scaling to Superboy Prime, does that mean that we should scale him to The Batman Who Laughs who defeated Perpetua, who created the entire DC Comics multiverse, and the post-Crisis incarnation of Wonder Girl (Cassie Sandsmark) to that in turn, or do you only want Superman upgraded for some selective reason, despite that he was outclassed by Prime during Infinite Crisis without severely weakening him first? Prime was always just intended as a "take that" smear-attack against the longtime fans of DC Comics that was supposed to be demonised, attacked, and smeared at every opportunity, not as a remotely consistent character even by DC Comics standards.

That is rebirth, a whole other can of worms. And we have no reason to backscale his PC self to his Rebirth self, and considering SPB varies a lot depending on his own emotions, there wouldn't be a reason to even scale his past incarnations to the version of him harming TDK. That's not a good anti-feat.

 

[Antvasima]

I say have their powers varies as the heroes always hold back to avoid killing unless they are anti heroes

There is only so far that we can remotely logically take that concept when the villains were usually portrayed as threats that could cause damage to the heroes.

 

[Vasco]

Prime facing off against TDK seems like an outlier.

 

[Emirp sumitpo]

Prime facing off against TDK seems like an outlier.

I'm pretty sure it was even agreed so, it's why SBP even lost his Death Metal key, so I have no idea why ya'll bringing it up again.

 

[Antvasima]

Prime facing off against TDK seems like an outlier.

Yes, but that is standards fare as far as DC Comics and Marvel Comics character fights are concerned, especially for Superboy Prime, as I tried to explain with several examples above.

 

[Antvasima]

I'm pretty sure it was even agreed so, it's why SBP even lost his Death Metal key, so I have no idea why ya'll bringing it up again.

Because Prime was consistently handled in this manner both against far more powerful characters such as TDK or Mxyzptlk and far weaker characters such as Cassie Sandsmark. He is not a reliable gauge to go by period, and neither are DC Comics or Marvel Comics character fights in general, and it is extremely selective to only consider the fights that result in a specific rating for a specific character as valid and the others as not.

 

[Antvasima]

They require the lanterns in order to even charge it.

Yes, but if they weren't explicitly shown to be very weakened at the time, we cannot somehow assume that their absolute peak explicit post-Crisis continuity feat was in fact a low-level anti-feat. That doesn't make any sense whatsoever.

As I've stated, there's no reason for any of these other GLs to even scale to the characters who would scale to Tier 3/2. The only characters who would do so are guys like Hal, Kyle and debatably John and that's it. Most lanterns in general are like, tier 5.

The issue is that Hal, Kyle, and John have not ever been treated as outclassing other Green Lanterns to anywhere near such a massively enormous degree, and were usually displayed at somewhere in tier 5 (and at their absolute peak, High 4-C) as well.

That is rebirth, a whole other can of worms. And we have no reason to backscale his PC self to his Rebirth self, and considering SPB varies a lot depending on his own emotions, there wouldn't be a reason to even scale his past incarnations to the version of him harming TDK. That's not a good anti-feat.

Superboy Prime is the exact same character post-Crisis and post-Rebirth, with unchanged nature and memories. After the post-Crisis Teen Titans beat him up and imprisoned him in the Source Wall, he was released after Perpetua broke free, was not stated to have gained any power-ups, and later overpowered the Batman Who Laughs for some reason.

 

[Qawsedf234]

How do we determine if they are outliers, if not by demonstrating that they are consistently far below Tier 2?

You can, which is fine. My point wasn't that you can't use lower showings to say they aren't Tier 2. But that you can't use the justification that Tier 5 is more consistent when the profiles already go with an inconsistent and high end Tier of the character.

As I have said previously, we cannot use historical standards regarding how we treat characters written by a single author that pays

I probably didn't explain myself well. I'm not saying that comic characters are consistent, since they aren't. I was saying that them maxing out at Tier 5 doesn't fit with how we scale them and other comic characters historically. Tier 2 being an outlier is fine, but it would be incorrect in view to say it's an outlier because Tier 5 has the most showings. When it would be Tier 8 or 7 with that train of thought.

 

[Antvasima]

You can, which is fine. My point wasn't that you can't use lower showings to say they aren't Tier 2. But that you can't use the justification that Tier 5 is more consistent when the profiles already go with an inconsistent and high end Tier of the character.

Well, tier 5 peaks genuinely is far more consistent for these characters, so maybe I used the wrong approach by allowing tier High 4-C or 4-B in order to try to be very charitable to the western superhero comic book fans, since some of them never seem to get satisfied and constantly hunger and relentlessly argue for more and more and more and more, no matter how over-the-top ridiculous it gets for anybody who has actually read a massive amount of these stories.

I probably didn't explain myself well. I'm not saying that comic characters are consistent, since they aren't. I was saying that them maxing out at Tier 5 doesn't fit with how we scale them and other comic characters historically. Tier 2 being an outlier is fine, but it would be incorrect in view to say it's an outlier because Tier 5 has the most showings. When it would be Tier 8 or 7 with that train of thought.

Well, traditionally we have tried to find some kind of balance by using the explicit feats that were a few tiers higher than they are usually portrayed, but not scale a very large part of the characters to a few recurrently unreliable feats that are literally infinitely higher than anything that they have ever displayed by genuinely pushing themselves to their peak capacities, so currently that balance has already been completely lost for Marvel Comics, and I would much prefer if we do something about that problem and turn our wiki acceptably reliable again, rather than let the complete madness spread further, and then gradually continue to get worse and worse and worse with more and more chain-scaling revisions, since, as always, "everybody can fight everybody" in these settings, as admitted by Stan Lee himself in a popular YouTube video.

We really need considerably stricter standards for how to scale characters from these settings, especially due to fights with other characters.

 

[Milly_Rocking_Bandit]

I’ve been watching the thread for a while, and I think the Stan Lee video is an extremely bad precedent to follow, and that’s because the author is responsible for the progression of power to begin with. That’s why showings inconsistent with the proposed narrative built around the character’s strength are so commonly scrutinized, like three separate Flashes getting knocked out by Catwoman, despite Barry perceiving events in less than an attosecond.

Kyle, for instance, had recurrently been shown as an exemption to the rule in comparison to other Lanterns, like in Green Lantern: New Guardians, where all the rings choose him as their wielders. Granted, said power absolutely wrecked his body, but the stance is he’s an extraordinarily notable Lantern amongst Lanterns.

 

[Antvasima]

Well, it isn't remotely just Stan Lee. Tom Brevoort has also stated it outright for example, and although most comic book authors haven't admitted that they do not care at all about if the displayed relative power levels of the characters that they handle make any sense or not in a larger context of the entire setting that they are playing around in, it is blatantly obvious from their stories, and they tend to have very conflicting perceptions of character power levels during interviews as well (Dan Jurgens stating that Odin only has power of a planetary scale and that Darkseid does not use avatars, for example).

Even Al Ewing, who has otherwise tried to make an effort with making sense of seemingly conflicting parts of Marvel Comics continuity, doesn't seem to care at all about rational power-scaling, as he has had characters that he really like who are explicitly tier 5-B or lower beat up or withstand attacks from tier Low 1-A or 1-A cosmic entities left and right (Black Panther, Blue Marvel, and Spectrum from the top of my head).

 

[KLOL506]

AGAIN.

WHY. ARE WE. DISCUSSING. OUTLIERS. This is derailing at its finest.

Focus on whether the feats are legit Tier 3/2 or not. Don't speak anything about outliers here. Do so when the scaling thread inevitably arrives where the rules for scaling will be thoroughly established.

 

[Deagonx]

AGAIN.

WHY. ARE WE. DISCUSSING. OUTLIERS. This is derailing at its finest.

Can you calm down? This is an important aspect of the revision thread. The feats have and are being discussed, we're just waiting on further input from the pertinent individuals. The discussion we are currently having does not obstruct that.

 

[Hellbeast]

Can you calm down? This is an important aspect of the revision thread. The feats have and are being discussed, we're just waiting on further input from the pertinent individuals. The discussion we are currently having does not obstruct that.

It kinda does if we’re devoting time to this topic when the thread is about determining what feats make sense. We’ve been around this merry go round for a while and we need to start coming to a conclusion eventually

 

[KLOL506]

Can you calm down? This is an important aspect of the revision thread. The feats have and are being discussed, we're just waiting on further input from the pertinent individuals. The discussion we are currently having does not obstruct that.

I am sorry, but I do not see anything here that remotely resembles proper discussion of whether a feat is Tier 3/2 or not. I'm just seeing constant arguments about "muh outliers" and "inconsistencies" here. So how about you calm down, and analyze the feats for whether they qualify the criteria for the tiers that OP proposed to put them at?

 

[KLOL506]

It kinda does if we’re devoting time to this topic when the thread is about determining what feats make sense. We’ve been around this merry go round for a while and we need to start coming to a conclusion eventually

Pretty much.

 

[Hellbeast]

Can anyone check on the master rebuttal by the Pro Upgrade side? We need an idea of pace

 

[Lord_Farquaad69420]

Can anyone check on the master rebuttal by the Pro Upgrade side? We need an idea of pace

last i checked emirp said he needs more time

 

[Deagonx]

I am sorry, but I do not see anything here that remotely resembles proper discussion of whether a feat is Tier 3/2 or not.

You're right, we aren't currently discussing the feats in the OP. We are discussing other feats and the question of how we tier outliers, if at all.

I'm just seeing constant arguments about "muh outliers" and "inconsistencies" here. So how about you calm down, and analyze the feats for whether they qualify the criteria for the tiers that OP proposed to put them at?

Again, there's no need to get worked up about this. The currently discussion is appropriate for this thread.

 

[KLOL506]

You're right, we aren't currently discussing the feats in the OP. We are discussing other feats

And that's where it should be kept at. Just focus on whatever feats you have to discuss and keep it at that.

and the question of how we tier outliers, if at all.

No. That is not the point of this thread as OP has made abundantly clear. So it should not be discussed in this thread. End of story.

Again, there's no need to get worked up about this. The currently discussion is appropriate for this thread.

Worked up? No. Concerned? Yes, especially when constant irrelevant derailing like this keeps delaying the actual analysis of the feats that are to be used, whichever feats are being discussed.

 

[Deagonx]

So it should not be discussed in this thread. End of story.

I have no idea why you think you would be the authority on what can be discussed in a thread when what you're objecting to is largely a discussion between several admins.

 

[Emirp sumitpo]

Mxyzptlk

Last I'm gonna comment on before I sleep but Mxy was stated to be weakened when Prime captured him, and Prime was amped during this arc, so even if this version of Prime scaled to Mxy (Which he absolutely does not), it wouldn't scale to his normal self. Even the weakened Mxy admitted he could've defeated Prime, if he really wanted to.